Persian - Native name of the Persian language. It is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and by minorities in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and countries like Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait and elsewhere. It is derived from the language of the ancient Persian people. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.

Persian and its varieties have official-language status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. According to CIA World Factbook, based on old data, there are approximately 62 million native speakers of Persian in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and about the same number of people in other parts of the world speak Persian. UNESCO was asked to select Persian as one of its languages in 2006.